A horse-drawn carriage is ridden near Central Park on Thursday in New York. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced he would like the city council to outlaw the horse-drawn carriages in Manhattan, calling the practice inhumane.

A horse-drawn carriage is ridden near Central Park on Thursday in New York. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced he would like the city council to outlaw the horse-drawn carriages in Manhattan, calling the practice inhumane. (AFP/Getty Images)

Carla Hall

Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of New York City, has been getting grief for making a priority of banishing horse-drawn carriages from Central Park in Manhattan. It was one of his campaign promises and he announced at a news conference on Monday—two days before he was sworn in—that the city would “get rid of horse carriages, period."

Let me get this straight: The first week a mayor comes into office, he announces, in no uncertain terms, that he’s going to do something he promised to do and do it right away. Yeah, that’s outrageous.

I know taking a shot at any new mayor is kind of like trophy hunting, but it’s ridiculous to blast De Blasio on this. Animal welfare advocates have been trying for years to get rid of the horse-drawn carriages. The Humane Society of the U.S. says that carriage horses in New York City live and work in inhumane conditions. According to a 2007 independent audit of the industry by the city comptroller, “the city's horses are not provided with enough water, risk overheating on hot asphalt, and are forced to stand in their own waste in stables.”

A 2011 editorial in the New York Times presented a different picture, saying that horses are kept in large stalls with hay and water at the ready and don’t work when the outdoor temperature is above 90 degrees or below 18.

Good. Now, let’s treat these horses even better and get them off carriages and the streets altogether. Even if conditions for horses are better than they used to be, this is still an outdated, unsophisticated and unnecessary use of horses for recreation. Less than a month ago, a carriage driver was arrested in New York for animal cruelty after a police officer spotted the driver working an injured horse.

Besides--it’s Manhattan. Do we really think tourists won’t find something else to do? In place of the carriages, De Blasio wants to have electric vintage replica vehicles for tourists to ride, which would also provide jobs for carriage drivers.

And by the way, that’s only part of what De Blasio promised. He also wants to toughen up laws on the sale of puppy mill animals, wants more regulation of pet dealers, and would revamp the city’s municipal shelter system, which definitely needs an overhaul. (The Los Angeles City Council bans the sale of animals from large-scale breeders—so-called puppy mills—at all pet stores in the city.)

The mayor still has to get this plan through the city council. After that, though, he can probably get the 200 some working horses retired into sanctuaries relatively quickly. The Humane Society of the U.S. and other groups have offered to take them.

Of course, De Blasio has colossal issues in the city to fix. (Or try to fix.) But I don’t think his announcing that one of the easier problems to solve would get tackled right away means he can't promptly address poverty, pensions and everything else ailing New York City.